2023 CZC New York Marathon

I first heard about Comfort Zone Camp back in 2014 while I was a senior at Endicott College in Beverly, MA.

As an education major, I was in the process of writing my thesis entitled "Coping with the Death of a Classmate: Educating Grieving Students." I chose to explore this topic in large part because of the grief I was carrying from unexpected losses and a passion for learning how to help others cope with their own grief, specifically school-aged children.

While researching the many ways to support children as young as toddlers in their grief journey, I walked past a poster stating that Endicott was welcoming a guest speaker from Comfort Zone Camp. I was very interested in learning about this organization, so when I returned to my dorm room, I started researching about CZC.

While I read CZC's mission, I reflected upon my own experiences with loss, the challenges I was facing with grief, and wondered how people younger than me could move forward with losses. I knew this was a community I wanted to join and children with whom I wanted to support. I attended the information session on February 26, 2014 and signed up for a volunteer training in March. In Fall 2014, I attended my first camp as a Big Buddy at Camp Burgess on Cape Cod and have attended over 10 camp weekends and 3 day camps since.